Pink Elephant isn’t jumping the shark, so much as it is a formal DOD.

This album sucks and is probably the band’s best and worst work yet. Sleep Token have conclusively proven themselves to be wholly incompetent songwriters and everything here is almost offensively boring.

It fails on every level. It’s not fun. It’s not sexy. It’s not impressive. It’s not inventive.

Regrettably, Moon Music follows in its predecessor’s footsteps by being universally bland, lyrically barren, and committing the mortal sin of posturing as a deep and important record while containing absolutely nothing of relevance.

The social media taint/ industry plant vibes radiate from this project as if it’s been sprayed by a skunk, with very little to recommend it other than as a soundtrack to some upcoming TikTok trend. There’s doubtless an audience for Ice Spice amongst the army of impressionable youths who may find this kind of rap wonderfully diverting, but it’s hard to deny just how artistically barren this release in particular is.

There’s just so very little here to work with, and even as a listener who’s dying to find things to like about this album, every minute spent revisiting it feels like a minute wasted. I sure hope they have it in them to rebound from this disastrous release.

[Forever] ends up being a stitched-together collection of hackneyed, banal platitudes laid over tongue-bitingly asinine hook after hook, all so mewling and flabby there’s little to grasp beyond feeble stabs at nostalgia.

Might Delete Later is a miscalculation at every level and may prove in time to be his version of Chance the Rapper’s The Big Day.

Taylor opts for interchangeable melodies that never really threaten to take attention away from the lyrics, which function more as tabloid clarification than earnest poetry. I struggle to hum a single melody but, against my will, I can make an educated guess as to what song is a Matty Song or a Travis Song or a Joe song.

WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU has little to offer on basically any front. On the drama front, there are no haymakers or grand declarations. There are a few guests that stop by ala Mr. Rodgers style to give low-effort mumblings to the effect of “Drake Sucks,” but much of the project is devoid of anything compelling enough to hang your hat on.

Bleachers ends up being all the worst fears of Jack’s career path made manifest, as any semblance of uniqueness is sanded down in favor of Christmas Special-quality cameos to remind you just how strong his LinkedIn profile has grown.

The only merit to be found on this soulless revisionism is the production, which is at least serviceable. Outside of that, this is, to the surprise of no one, inferior to the original in every conceivable way.

If you’re the type of music fan who loves every facet of their music to be vacant of genuine emotion, creativity and expression, this album will satiate your cravings, you hungry listener.

This band’s tedium, their mercilessly polished tones, their big bucks mastering, their humourless refusal to spotlight any glorious points of absurdity within their own writing, their algorithmic combination of the most derivative parts of how many separate genres into a no less unremarkable whole - it all makes for one of the most irksome feints at artistry I’ve heard this decade and feels oriented towards an impressionable audience with sickeningly calculated precision.

It’s a record so entrenched in referencing other music that it ceases to be artistic expression, and is entirely separated from expression as a concept, floating in its own sterility. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for whichever craven startup CEO cooked this one up in the experience machine; you won’t be able to unplug fast enough.

The album’s music is a similar story, theoretically well-equipped with its slick production and generous emphasis on slide guitar, yet so heartlessly procedural in its composition and homogenous in its tempo that its encapsulation of the country Experience misses the elation and dynamism of wind-in-your-hair and ends up for more cholesterol-in-your-burger.

This record comprises fourteen tracks, yet managed to be nothing more than a bad concoction of bad pop punk, bad rap rock, bad lyrics, and vaguely competent performances.

Imagine the worst Good Charlotte song repeating “I fell in love with an emo girl” as a chorus. ... If anything, the more trap-infused tracks gracing the record’s back half fare better, solely because they aren’t direct copies of some of the most well-known pop punk songs of all time. Moreover, the extremely overblown production doesn’t achieve the same maximalism here, making for a comparatively listenable bunch of songs. Key word: comparatively.

Sticky is the very definition of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks. Unfortunately for this album, nothing does, and all you’re left with is the horrible odour from its experimentation.

Every song layers Levine's singing/clumsy rapping over the most cringe inducing trap beats, and most of the time he sounds like a middle-aged stepdad trying to sound "hip" to get in good with his stepson. It's transparent cultural and trend pandering, and even when Levine adheres to his bread and butter, the melodies are more vanilla than usual.

If Norman Fucking Rockwell! was the record her non-partisan sympathisers dreamed she might make, this is the one they feared. It’s hushed but impersonal, pared-back without having anything to reveal, and verbose without saying anything of substance.

Despite its competence musically, Tickets to My Downfall’s cookie-cutter, antiquated presentation and MGK’s blatant ignorance make it a truly punishing experience to sit through. Punk by definition is supposed to be something that comes straight from the heart in all its raw ugliness, but this album is the anthesis of that and doesn’t even try to hide its overt shallowness.

Everything about Father of All Motherfuckers is lazy. It begins with the self-referential American Idiot album cover, which features a unicorn exhaling/vomiting rainbows whilst forcefully blowing flames out of its ass. The music is befitting of said artwork, as even the staunchest fan would have an aneurysm trying to figure out what the hell these guys were thinking on this one.

Can’t Say I Ain’t Country is an amalgamation of country-pop’s worst features. It’s country without the grit or emotion; pop without any of the fun or hooks.

Any piece that can cover an emotional spectrum ranging from gruff cries all the way to handclaps must have a lot to offer. ... Step aside Nickelback, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Imagine Dragons.

There are no good songs. There are no ‘moments’ that make any of these 18 songs worth listening to. There’s nothing that implies there is potential, there are no guests that make Eminem worth listening to, there are no good lyrics, there are no good production flourishes, and there aren’t any melodies. There’s no evident flow, and there isn’t anything to be gained from listening to this that can’t be done by listening to literally anything else.

This album is simply objectively terrible. Issues have managed to craft an album that is entirely without any sort of value, appeal, artistic merit, creativity.

Every song is so utterly devoid of energy, like they've released a record composed of the spaces between the notes in all their previous work.